Best CD sound: Marantz SA8001 or Rega Apollo?

Anyone???

I'm very interested in this question too. So far, there doesn't appear to be any published review of the SA 8001. I recently e-mailed John Atkinson and he confirmed that Stereophile has obtained a unit and that the review is provisionally scheduled to be published in Sept. or Oct.

I decided not to wait and picked up a demo SA 8001 from audio advisor. Sure beats the old Rotel RCD 951 I was using, but I'm still curious whether the REga would be an upgrade.

By the way, the Marantz did NOT sound very good right out of the box. Very crispy. But the sound warmed up considerably after I left it running for about a week.

Daltonlanny,
I don't know why but very few people have anything to say about the 8001. I posted something about the 8001 about a year ago...again it was very very little (i'll just assume not many have it).

ANyway I bought one last September I think it was. I liked the 8001. I bought it to replace an SA8260, that to me was nice and warm, good sounding for the money, but I wanted to try the new one. The 8001 is far more transparent and open than the 8260. I really have nothing bad to say about it at all. FOr the money its probably one of the best, if not the best. To have SACD added, is a real bonus, and for that reason I skipped the Rega. I don't have anything to add about the compare/contrast to the Rega as i have no exp with the apollo. Anyway I wish Stereophile would do something like sub 1000 players shootout. That would be very useful.
I have since moved on the NAD M5 CD/SACD player. I really like this player, but its 2x the price. Is it 2x as good (I have no idea on how one could measure such a thing)? Probably not, but therein lies the rub.